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A Great Weekend and Now, Much to Look Forward To

It was an America at peace with itself this long Memorial Day weekend. The kick-off to the Summer of 2011 went smoothly in New England and here in the Greater Boston area where the weather finally, fully, wonderfully cooperated, sending tens of thousands to our beaches and into the streets of our neighborhoods for cook-outs, visits and a few days of balminess, sunshine and ease.

This is the way it is supposed to be on Memorial Day with the summer still in front of us.

It is a happy time indeed for those of us still delighting every moment we are outside that the wicked cold, ice and snow of winter have been relegated to a back seat for the next five months at minimum.

So here we are, at the beginning of the Summer of 2011.

It is impossible to know what awaits us during this summer just begun. We won’t know about it until it has passed. This is one of the romantic bits about the summer. There is all kind of mystery about it before it officially begins.

Who will fall in love? Who will have a great success? Who will take a trip to Europe with their family? Who will read through a half-dozen novels sitting down the beach? Who will swim in wild waves and warm water? Who will head off to Martha’s Vineyard and to Nantucket, to the rocky beaches of Gloucester, to the mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire?

What song will resonate in the years to come as the signature tune of the Summer of 2011? What special or absolutely foolish movie will take us all inside into an air conditioned theater?

How many of us will attend college commencements for our kids, now adults, and entering the complexity and the madness that is America? And how many more will attend high school commencements

Who among us will come to a new place in our lives?

For many, many local residents this weekend there was the obligatory trip to the cemetery to place flowers on and to share thoughts by the graveside of loved ones lost in battle for this nation.

And in one of the greatest ironies during this last weekend marking the beginning of summer, we find the Boston Bruins a finalist for the Stanley Cup. The series begins in Vancouver Wednesday night.

It has been 39 years since the Bruins won the Stanley Cup led by the legendary Bobby Orr. For many of us who recall that last cup, the finals about to begin are about a return to yesterday, to the grandeur and the lost beauty that was long ago what the Bruins were all about.